


A Week of Rain

by Mithen



Category: Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice
Genre: Amnesia, Guilt, M/M, Resurrection, Romance, Secret Identity
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-17
Updated: 2016-10-23
Packaged: 2018-07-15 15:01:50
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 17,950
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7227187
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mithen/pseuds/Mithen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Clark Kent seeks out Bruce Wayne when he is resurrected, but he has no memory of his time as Superman and no powers.  Bruce has to deal with an unexpected visitor to his lake house--and his own grief, guilt, and attraction.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

The smell of dirt wakes him.

He’s face down in a ditch on the side of a road. Weeds tickling his face. He rolls over. It’s night. The moon is full. 

His chest aches as though he’s been screaming, but he doesn’t remember screaming.

He doesn’t remember.

He doesn’t remember anything.

His fingers hurt. He holds his hands up; in the moonlight he can see the dirt beneath the nails. There’s blood there too.

 _He’d gotten out before the last of his strength gave out._ The thought comes to him, but he doesn’t know what it refers to. Gotten out of what? He casts his mind back and finds only darkness. Not even a name.

He sits up and every muscle seems to shriek in agony, a wave of pain so intense he doesn’t know what to do with it. That isn’t right, he _knows_ that isn’t right. He’s wearing a black suit, oddly formal, but he can feel dirt under his collar, in his socks. He staggers to his feet, wincing, and tries to brush some of it away. His hands are shaking. The moon slips behind a cloud and he’s left in the dark.

 _Gotham._ He doesn’t know where he is, but. _Gotham._ That’s an important place. Something important happened there. There’s a reason he should be there. He doesn’t know what it is.

_Gotham._

Slowly, painfully, he starts to limp down the road, looking for a street sign. When it becomes clear he’s got a _long_ way to go, he puts up his thumb as trucks go by, their headlights stabbing at him in the dark.

It starts to rain, turning the dirt that covers him to mud.

He doesn’t know how long he’s been walking when someone finally stops and picks him up, asks him where he’s going.

“Gotham,” he says over the sound of the rain on the windshield.

“You’re in luck,” says the driver. “That’s where I’m bound. What’s your name, son?”

It catches him off guard. Nothing comes to him in the dark. And then a name that he grabs like a drowning man suddenly finding a spar: “Bruce,” he says.

It’s not his name. But it’s an important name. He knows this. 

“Nice to meet you, Bruce. Looks like you’ve had a rough time of it,” says the driver, sympathetically. 

“I guess,” he mutters. He flips down the visor and sees his face for the first time. It’s streaked with mud, and there’s a scar trailing across one cheek. Not an old scar. He touches it wonderingly, tracing the vicious line of it. The trucker, whose name turns out to be Stu, tries to engage him in conversation for a little bit, but when he doesn’t respond, lets a casual silence fall. The rain beats down, veiling the world outside.

He feels himself listing sideways and jerks upright in panic, digging his nails into the palm of his hand. He doesn’t want to sleep, to let the darkness take him again. _No._

Eventually, try as he might to fight it, it takes him anyway.

When he wakes up, all he feels is a vast relief, as if he’s escaped something again.

* * *

When they get to Gotham, he helps Stu unload the truck in the rain as repayment for the ride and the food he had shared on the way. “You’re a strong fellow,” Stu says appreciatively as he hoists a crate.

He looks down at the crate in his arms. He can lift it, but it’s an effort. “Not really,” he mutters, feeling somehow dissatisfied.

Stu insists he has a cup of coffee in the break room before he goes, and he accepts because he doesn’t know where he’s going. The room is filled with exhausted truckers; a television on the wall rattles off baseball scores. He takes a gulp of coffee and chokes as it burns his mouth.

“Sip! Sip! Geez, kid, don’t you even know how to drink coffee?” Stu says.

He takes a more careful sip. Then he almost chokes again as a face fills the screen: urbane, cosmopolitan. Eyebrows more suited to glaring than smiling, though his face is neutral as he leans close to the microphone. Just enough stubble to be masculine without looking negligent. He’s saying something about rebuilding, but the words are a blur.

A name goes by on the screen: _Bruce Wayne._

He stands up. “I have to go,” he says. “I’m sorry. Can you give me directions to the library?”

The rain beats down on him as he makes his way out into the city.

_Bruce Wayne._

* * *

Bruce Wayne knows it’s raining before he opens his eyes from the pain in his knee. It’s an ache that’s been there for years now. He’s gotten used to it.

There are other, more recent aches that he hasn’t.

How do you mourn the loss of a friend you never had? A friendship you certainly didn’t deserve, a friendship you threw away stillborn. 

But still.

He listens to the rain falling endlessly into the lake for a while, longer than he should. There’s work to do. He’s glad for it.

Rising, he pulls his ridiculous satin dressing gown on-- _de rigueur_ for dealing with houseguests who won’t take the hint and leave quickly and quietly the next day. Not that anyone has spent the night with him recently. Not since--

He growls something wordless at himself and stalks out of the bedroom, rubbing his eyes. He looks out at the rain--and stops, his heart hammering against his ribs.

There on his deck is a ghost. A dead man. A vision. Except that ghosts don’t get soaking wet in the rain, their hair plastered to their head. Dead men don’t smile hesitantly, nervously.

And visions don’t have a scar across their cheek that you put there, barely-healed, sharp as an accusation.

Clark Kent--alive, _alive!_ \--puts his hand to the glass wall separating them and says, “Mr. Wayne?” He pauses, and that tentative smile flits across his face again. “May I come in?”


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A ghost appears at Bruce Wayne's lake house in the rain.

Clark Kent stood in the lake house, the rain dripping off his hair onto the slate floor and making a quiet ticking sound into the silence. He was shivering as if he were cold (his skin had been cold as marble. Bruce had pressed a hasty kiss against his forehead before he could think better of it). He was still wearing the black suit they had buried him in.

_Buried him in._

“But you’re--” Bruce started to say. Couldn’t finish.

Clark took a half-step forward, his eyes eager. “Yes?” he said. “Do you know me?” 

Bruce couldn’t meet his eyes. He looked at the scar cutting across his cheek instead. The scar Bruce had given him.

“I don’t remember my name,” Clark whispered, and Bruce realized his teeth were chattering. “I’m sorry.”

_”Don’t--_ ” Bruce broke off and swallowed. “Sit down,” he said. “I’ll get a blanket.”

Clark took the blanket from him gratefully, then sat in silence as Bruce built up a fire in the fireplace, as if he knew Bruce needed time to collect himself. The tiny flames curled up around the kindling, consuming them. Bruce stared at them.

“Your name is Clark Kent,” he said to the flames. “Does that mean anything to you?”

A long, contemplative silence. Then, heavy with sorrow: “No.”

“Do you remember…” _Me, my foot on your throat. Me, taunting your helplessness. Me, dragging you across the ground like a spoil of war._ “...anything?”

“I don’t remember anything before waking up in a ditch,” Clark said.

“Then why did you come…” _To me._ “Here?”

“I… don’t know. I just knew that Gotham was important. That someone named Bruce was important. And when I saw your face on the tv, I knew--”

Bruce waited. The kindling was ash now. The logs were catching fire, burning up.

“I knew you were important. I didn’t know why. I just knew I had to find you. Are we--” Clark’s voice broke off. “Are we--” A long pause. “Do we know each other?”

Bruce turned around. How many times he’d imagined what he would say if he had even just a few more seconds. What would he have whispered into Superman’s ear, if there’d been time for just a few more words? A thousand scenarios, a thousand dreams, a thousand possibilities.

“We were friends,” he said instead of any of them. He hoped it had been true, at the end.

“Ah.” Something flickered across Clark’s face and was gone. “Why don’t I remember anything?”

It was a very good question, second only to _how the hell are you alive?_ Maybe slightly above _why do you have no powers?_ “There was a...disaster,” Bruce said. “Here in Gotham. You got caught in it.”

Clark touched the scar on his cheek. “Is that how I got--”

Bruce didn’t like that question at all. “You were trying to help people,” he said, letting it be an answer.

Clark tilted his head like a dog who has heard a distant sound. “Help people?” he said, and there was a mixture of hope and happiness and bone-deep weariness that seemed to rip at Bruce’s heart.

“You’re a reporter,” Bruce said. “You were trying to help and everything went to hell. We thought you were dead--” His voice cracked wildly on the word (Superman’s body heavy in his arms in the way that only dead bodies are; the casket lid shutting out the last glimpse of his face) and his knees hurt again and he realized he was on his knees on the stone floor, shaking. “We thought you were--”

Clark’s arms were around him, he was kneeling on the floor next to him, the blanket thrown around them both like a sheltering cape. His fingers were warm. His body was warm. He held Bruce and Bruce listened to his (living, living!) heartbeat and felt joy and guilt and longing batter at him.

After a while Clark said, very gently, “‘We’”?

“Your mother,” Bruce said. “Your co-workers and friends.”

“My mother,” said Clark.

Bruce threw off the blanket, staggering to his feet. “I have to call her,” he said, horrified that he hadn’t thought of it until now. “I have to tell her.”

“Bruce, I-- don’t remember her.”

“You will,” Bruce said, “I’m sure you will.” His hands were shaking as he dialed Martha’s number. Only when she picked up and her heard her “Hello?” did he suddenly realize he had no idea what to say: _Hi, it’s Bruce. Your son isn’t dead?_ Insanity.

“Hi,” he said. “It’s...it’s Bruce Wayne. Clark isn’t dead.”

* * *

Clark heard the person on the other end of the line gasp. Then there was silence.

“I’m sorry,” said Bruce. He looked utterly lost. He looked like a person who was very rarely utterly lost and had no idea how to go about being found again. “He’s alive, Martha. He doesn’t remember--he doesn’t remember anything. But he’s alive. Martha, are you there?” 

The room was so silent. There was only the rain against the windows. It was so quiet Clark could hear the woman’s voice: “May I...see him?”

Bruce fumbled with the phone, putting it on video, and held it up toward Clark.

Clark heard her gasp again and he tried to smile. Then the screen flickered and a woman was there, her face framed by gray hair, her eyes accented with crow’s feet that spoke of a lifetime of worry and laughter. Clark waited, but none of the worries or the laughter came to him, just a wave of inchoate emotion.

“I don’t remember you,” he said as tears tracked down her cheeks. “But I know you. I _know_ you,” he said. “Please believe me.”

“I believe you,” she said, and smiled through her tears. “Bruce, may I--”

“--There’ll be a plane for you at the Kansas City airport in the morning,” said Bruce. “I’ll arrange it. Just tell them who you are. Don’t worry about anything else, just come.” 

“Please,” whispered Clark.

When the phone went dark again he closed his eyes and struggled to compose himself. The sound of the rain was loud all around him. When he opened his eyes again Bruce was staring at him, a keen look that quickly vanished into something more neutral.

“How do we know each other?” Clark asked. “My memory may be flawed, but I know enough to know that newspaper reporters rarely hobnob with this kind of…” He waved vaguely to include the lake, the fireplace, the stark modernist opulence of Wayne’s house.

“We met at a party,” Bruce said. “We didn’t get along.” A smile touched his mouth, very lightly.

“How did I win you over?”

The smile disappeared. “By being you,” Bruce said.

“How did _you_ win _me_ over?”

Such pain in those rain-dark eyes. “I don’t know,” whispered Bruce.

Clark swallowed. “We weren’t getting along, were we, when I went missing,” he said.

Bruce turned away from him. “We’d...had a fight, just before,” he said. “A bad one.”

Something about the way he said it, the tightness in his voice--

Clark bent and picked up the blanket from the floor where Bruce had dropped it, folding it carefully, focusing on getting all of the corners lined up correctly, his thoughts whirling. By the time he was done, he had his face back under control.

“Well, if you feel bad about it,” he said, “You can make it up to me by telling me more about myself.”

* * *

“Your bedroom was on the third floor. You had posters of Japanese anime and your favorite basketball players on the walls. You collected wheat pennies and had a piggy bank full of them.”

The fire was almost out, its dying flickers the only light in the dark room, and Bruce’s throat felt scratched and raw. All those months of research--of talking to Martha Kent, to Pete Ross, to Lana Lang, of interviewing anyone in Smallville who would care to talk about Clark Kent, as if understanding the man would atone somehow--pouring out of him in a few short hours. He told Clark about his childhood, about his friends, about his home.

He didn’t tell him about his powers.

Clark was sitting next to him on the couch. He’d showered and borrowed a set of Bruce’s pajamas, picking out the plainest Bruce had. He was smiling at Bruce, and Bruce wanted it to continue forever. But his rush of words finally ran down and he stopped, looking back at Clark.

“I don’t remember any of it,” Clark said. “But thank you. You obviously knew me well.”

Words on paper, pixels on a screen, facts in a file. But it was all Bruce had left. Until today. “I came to know you very well,” he said.

Clark looked away at the fire. “I’m...sorry I don’t remember you,” he said. “I’m sorry we quarreled at the end.”

The sound of Superman’s body thudding into stone. The look in his eyes as he’d inhaled lurid green gas. Choking on his attempts to get Bruce to understand, to help. _Quarreled._

Bruce stood up. “It’s getting late and you must be tired. I’ll tell you about your life in Metropolis in the morning, if you’d like.”

“You know what I’d like more?” Bruce looked back at him, and Clark smiled. “I’d like to know more about you.”

“I--” Bruce looked at Clark. The scar on his cheek marred the classical symmetry of his features, somehow giving him a lopsided, woebegone charm. “I’m not a very interesting person,” he managed.

Clark chuckled and threw his hands out to indicate the lake house and all its austere luxuries. “I sincerely doubt that.”

“Being rich doesn’t make you interesting,” Bruce said.

Clark sobered, tilting his head to the side. “True,” he said. “But you’re interesting anyway. I can tell.” Then that smile lit his face again, a tentative sunrise in the rain. “I wouldn’t be your friend if you weren’t interesting.”

Bruce looked away. “You’re sure you’re okay sleeping on the couch? You can borrow my bed, you deserve a good night’s sleep.”

“I’m fine out here,” Clark said, fluffing the pillow Bruce had given him. “Thank you for letting me stay.”

Bruce shrugged. Then he tapped the panel on the wall that slid the blinds closed, blocking out the view of the rain-swept midnight lake.

_”Stop,_ ” Clark said, and his voice was full of a panic so raw that Bruce slammed the panel again without thinking. 

“What’s wrong?”

“I just--” Clark seemed to take a moment to catch his breath. “I don’t like the dark,” he said. “I like to be able to see outside. I don’t like--being alone in the dark.” One hand was clenched and his jaw was set as though he expected Bruce to question or to mock him.

Bruce remembered the mud under the collar of his suit. The dirt and blood under his fingernails.

He touched the panel again and the blinds slid quietly open once more.

Clark relaxed as they did, the tension leaving his body. “Thank you,” he whispered.

Bruce looked around the dark room, lit only by the embers of the fire. Then he quietly turned on the overhead light to about thirty percent. “Is that okay?”

He saw Clark swallow hard. “A little more would be...good,” Clark said.

Bruce moved the light up to about fifty percent. Then he turned on one of the corner lamps and the track lighting on the deck, so that Clark could see outside more easily. “Turn anything on or off as you like,” he said. 

“I might run up your electricity bill a bit,” Clark said with a wan chuckle.

“I don’t care,” Bruce said around a tightness in his throat. “I can afford it.”

“Thank you,” said Clark. “I’ll see you in the morning.”

“Yes,” said Bruce. How many nights of terrible nightmares and worse dreams had he woken from to find the world still had no Clark Kent in it? “I’ll see you in the morning.”

* * *

Clark lay on Bruce Wayne’s couch--it wasn’t comfortable, but then nothing about this place seemed designed to be comfortable--and closed his eyes, but sleep wouldn’t come. The darkness hovered nearby, waiting to pounce. The rain outside shivered the surface of the lake with a sound like silk tearing, like vast wings unfurling.

He remembered the look in Bruce’s eyes when he spoke of having fought before Clark went missing. The way he had trembled when Clark had put his arms around him. The sound of his voice as he told Clark about his own childhood in exquisite detail, trying to make him remember.

Clark wrapped the blanket more tightly around himself, remembering the care with which Bruce had turned on the lights, banishing the dark.

Eventually he fell into a sleep without dreams, a darkness shot through with golden light.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Martha and Alfred both stop by, and Clark remembers some things. But not everything.

Bruce woke to the sound of silverware clattering to the stone floor and Alfred’s voice: _“Good heavens--”_

Bruce threw on a bathrobe and charged out into the living room to find Alfred staring in shock at Clark Kent, who was sitting up on the sofa and rubbing his eyes. “Alfred,” he said hastily, “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you. This is Clark. He’s--” Alfred stared at him, his face pale, and Bruce finished limply, “--He’s alive.”

Alfred arched an eloquent eyebrow at Bruce, regaining his composure within the space of a breath. “Patently, sir,” he said.

“I’m sorry,” said Clark. “I didn’t mean to startle you…” He let the sentence trail off, looking at Bruce with a clear _an introduction would be nice_ expression.

“Clark, this is Alfred Pennyworth,” said Bruce. “He was the butler for Wayne Manor.”

Clark laughed as he stood up. “Seriously? Your _butler?_ ”

“For the Manor,” said Alfred, shaking his hand. “These days I’m more of a… personal assistant.”

Clark stretched, looking out at the lake, dimpled with rain. “Why don’t you live at the Manor? This place is gorgeous but a bit small.”

After all this time, he should be more prepared, but Clark’s words hit him like a blow to the stomach, like a roaring backdraft. Bruce looked out the window, hearing Alfred say “The Manor burned down some years ago, I’m afraid. We haven’t rebuilt after the… tragedy.”

“I’m so sorry,” Clark said, sounding chagrined. “I...don’t know if I knew that.”

“I’m sorry, sir?” 

Bruce swung back around at Alfred’s startled voice, saying hastily: “Clark doesn’t remember...anything,” he said.

Alfred’s eyes widened. “Ah,” he said. He paused, as if weighing his words carefully. “Nothing?”

Bruce was keenly aware of Clark looking between their faces. “He woke up in a ditch in Kansas and made his way here. That’s all he knew. Not even his own name.”

“But he knew to come to you,” said Alfred.

“I knew he was important,” said Clark, and Alfred turned to look at him.

“That he is,” Alfred said. He cleared his throat. “As I was not informed of your guest, you’ll have to split breakfast between the two of you, I’m afraid. And Master Bruce, you have a meeting at eleven--”

“--Cancel it,” said Bruce. He looked at Alfred and amended: “Please.”

“Are you certain, sir?”

“Nothing is more important than Clark,” said Bruce.

Alfred frowned. “Nothing?” he said, and Bruce could hear in his voice all the weight of black silk and kevlar and humming electronics in the caves below.

“Nothing,” said Bruce. He turned his gaze to Clark, his hair still rumpled with sleep, wearing Bruce’s pajamas. “Your mother will be landing at ten thirty,” he said. “Shall we go to the airport to meet her?”

Clark looked startled, then wary. “I’d rather--” he said, then broke off as though he wasn’t sure what to say next. “I’d rather wait here, I think. If that’s okay.”

“Of course.”

Bruce looked at Alfred, who nodded. “I’ll pick her up.”

Clark wandered to the window, looking out at the lake, and Bruce moved to stand beside him. Part of his brain was whirring with thoughts, like a mad clockwork: Clark had been shivering last night, an involuntary action. Was there some way to test him and see if his powers were truly gone without him noticing? One couldn’t exactly stab him with a fork and see if it hurt him. Maybe ask him to lift something heavy? Push him off the deck and see if he hovered? Was it possible he had expended the last of his powers to escape from-- Bruce’s thoughts glitched, stuttered, and he forced himself to finish the sentence--from his grave? And was the memory loss due to psychological or physical trauma (both of which caused by Bruce himself, a vicious little voice reminded him)? There weren’t many scientific papers out there about the effects of extended periods of not-living on memory. And it’s possible Kryptonian memory worked entirely differently than human-- 

“It feels safe here,” Clark said under his breath.

Bruce stopped and took a breath. The chattering clockwork of his brain slowed, steadied. _Nothing is more important than Clark._ “I hope it is,” he said.

Bruce stood beside Clark and watched the rain fall endlessly into the lake like sheets of silk. The silence was filled with the white hiss of it, gentle as a lullaby, and for a moment, Bruce was simply there--not planning, not preparing, simply _there_ with Clark.

* * *

Clark sipped the mud-green shake Alfred--Bruce’s _butler_ , the thought still made him want to laugh--had brought and grimaced. “This tastes terrible,” he said. “I would have thought you’d have caviar and foie gras for breakfast.”

Bruce chuckled and snagged the shake from him, finishing it off with a loud and very un-classy slurp. “You’d be surprised how much energy it takes to be a parasite on society,” he said.

Clark made an exasperated noise. “I did some reading on you while I was looking for your address,” he said. “You’re no parasite.”

Bruce shrugged. “Semantics.”

“You do a lot of good.”

“You...don’t remember me,” said Bruce. “Or you wouldn’t say that.” His face was closed off again, his eyes distant.

Clark whirled and started opening drawers in the tiny kitchenette at random, peering into them. As Bruce stared, he stormed out of the kitchen and went into Bruce’s bedroom. “Hey,” Bruce said with a hint of alarm as Clark started pulling open drawers there as well. “What do you think you’re _doing_?”

“I’m looking for your cat o’nine tails,” Clark said. The drawers were full of silks and linens, glossy and heavy; he resisted the urge to touch them. “Or your flogger.”

“My _what?_ ”

“You seem to enjoy self-flagellation, so I figure there must be something.” Another drawer thrown open, this one full of delicately embroidered handkerchiefs. “Maybe a hairshirt?”

Behind him, Bruce’s voice: “I don’t like people going through my belongings.” His voice was cold, but was there the tiniest thread of amusement beneath it? Clark wanted to think so.

“I’m not ‘people,’” Clark said. “I’m apparently your friend, and I’ve forgotten you and want to know more about you, and I _don’t_ mean listening to you whine about how you’re a bad person.” He leveled a finger at Bruce. “So cut the crap.”

Bruce’s mouth twitched. Then he made a quick gesture, as if clearing a slate. “All right,” he said. “Consider it cut. For now. What do you want to know about me?”

“Everything,” said Clark.

Bruce smiled. It was a slow smile, gentle and wry, and it turned his face from austerely handsome into something almost boyish. _I’ve never seen him smile before,_ the thought came to Clark, though that was absurd--if they were friends, surely he had. Surely.

_Never,_ his mind whispered.

“We probably don’t have time for _everything_ ,” said Bruce.

* * *

“...picked up some meditation techniques and some very nice Noritake china while I was there,” Bruce said. He broke off. “Am I boring you yet?”

“Not at all,” said Clark, and indeed, he didn’t look bored. He’d changed from the bathrobe into a pair of Bruce’s jeans and a polo shirt, both of which were just slightly too big for him. He leaned forward, clasping his hands together. “I wonder if I’ve been to Japan.”

“Uh.” Bruce hadn’t gotten to tracking down Clark’s actions during the time he’d been wandering the world; he’d barely finished chronicling his childhood. There had been so many details to record, so many facts to memorialize and keep forever.

To honor the dead. 

Clark was looking at him wistfully, a question in his eyes. The honored, blessed, beloved dead, sitting here, scarred and breathing and beautiful, on his sofa. 

“If you did, you never mentioned it to me,” Bruce said truthfully.

Clark looked like he was about to say more, but the sound of tires on gravel cut through the rain and he went completely still, his eyes going wide. Without thinking, Bruce reached out and caught Clark’s hands up in his, squeezing them. “You’ll be fine,” he whispered.

Clark nodded as if he were reassured, but he was very pale as he stood to meet his mother.

She spotted him through the windows as she hurried down the walkway under a black umbrella; Bruce knew the moment she saw him from the way her steps faltered and her hand went to her throat. Alfred quietly took her arm and helped her down the rain-slick path and to the door.

“Clark,” she said. She raised her hands, then dropped them. After a long, helpless moment, she put her hands to her face and started to cry.

“Oh.” Clark stepped forward and gathered her into his arms, burying his face in her hair. “Oh Ma, don’t cry.” He made a sudden sobbing noise and held her closer. “Your perfume,” he said. “It always reminded me of the lilac trees around the swing. Oh Ma, don’t cry. Please don’t cry.”

Bruce watched as they clung to each other. Then Clark lifted his head and met Bruce’s gaze.

“I remember,” he said.

Bruce staggered back a step, resisted the urge to turn and flee. 

“I remember all the things you told me about last night, I _remember_ them now,” Clark said in a breathless rush, his face alight with happiness. “I remember my home, I remember my school, I remember the Daily Planet, I remember…”

His words slowed and stopped as Alfred, Martha, and Bruce looked at him.

“I still don’t remember you,” he said, looking Bruce with something like anguish in his eyes. 

There was a long beat of silence, filled with the sound of rain.

“Let’s,” Bruce said, then had to swallow and start again. “Let’s try and figure out precisely what you do and don’t remember.”

* * *

Martha’s face under the black umbrella was pale and set. She walked beside Bruce along the lake, the rain a curtain all around them.

“Nothing related to his powers, then,” she said. “Nothing related to being alien, to being Superman. He’s forgotten all of that.”

“We don’t know enough about Kryptonian physiology,” said Bruce. “How is his brain different from a human brain? Who knows what effect trauma of that kind could have on it? We don’t even know how he’s _here,_ ” he finished helplessly.

“Sunlight,” Martha said slowly, gazing out at the lake. “Sunlight always healed him.”

Bruce stared at her. “And it’s been raining the whole time. So you’re saying if we can get him into sunlight--all we have to do is get him into an airplane, or even just drive north, above the storm front, and--he should get his powers back, maybe his memories?”

“It seems possible,” said Martha. _“If.”_ She put a hand on Bruce’s arm. “But maybe there’s no hurry. Maybe we could just...wait for the weather to change naturally.”

Bruce took a breath, let it out. Martha seemed to take his silence for disapproval, because she turned toward him, her eyes blazing. 

“My son gave _everything_ to protect this world. He gave his _life_ and I buried his body in the _ground!_ And what has this world ever given him back? Nothing but hatred and pain--aside from his few friends,” she added hastily. “Aside from you, for example.”

Bruce felt his breath stutter and stop for a moment. Somehow there had never seemed like a good time to mention that he had spent much of the last hours of Clark Kent’s life trying to do what Doomsday had succeeded at. Lois and Diana had held their tongues as well--he wondered how much of his distress had shown to the two women, what conclusions they had drawn. And now Martha Kent was including him among her son’s friends, when he had been anything, _anything_ but. 

_Accomplice to his murder_ , his mind whispered bleakly. If he hadn’t inhaled lungfuls of Kryptonite gas… if he hadn’t been weakened…

“Please,” Martha whispered. “Is it so much to hope for, that he have a few days free of those terrible responsibilities, Bruce? Free from the memory of the people who died despite his efforts?” She looked out across the lake again. “That he have a few days of peace and quiet in the rain?”

* * *

Clark looked out to where his mother and Bruce were standing under black umbrellas, faces veiled by rain, on the verge of the lake. His mother put a hand on Bruce’s arm as if she were arguing with him, and Clark strained his ears to catch what they were saying, then stopped, feeling foolish. How could he expect to hear a conversation through reinforced glass walls, from so far away?

Bruce bowed his head and nodded, and Clark saw his mother’s shoulders slump. With relief or despair? He didn’t know.

“I want to _remember_ him,” he whispered.

“Do you, sir?” Clark whirled to find Alfred Pennyworth behind him. “Master Bruce is...not an easy man.”

“To be friends with?”

Alfred seemed to consider. “Not an easy man in any way.” He shot Clark an oblique glance. “Have you considered the possibility that since he appears to be the one thing in your life you do not remember, perhaps there is a good reason for that?”

“He says we fought before I went missing. Do you know what the fight was about?”

Alfred didn’t move, but somehow seemed to become more remote. “I do.”

“But you won’t tell me.”

Alfred shook his head. “I will not.”

Bruce and Martha were coming back toward the house. Bruce took Martha’s arm as they walked, helping her down the path. He looked up and saw that Clark was watching them, and his eyes warmed, though he didn’t smile.

“I want to remember him,” Clark said.

“If I were to give you any advice, sir,” said Alfred abruptly, “It would be to consider this a chance to learn about Bruce Wayne anew--as if you did not know him at all. I would advise you to consider that a gift.”

“You think he’s worth getting to know,” Clark said with certainty.

Alfred nodded.

“Then I will.”

* * *

The lake house was quiet again except for the slow hiss of rain and the crackle of the fireplace. Alfred and Martha were gone--Bruce had offered to let Martha stay, but she had shaken her head with a small smile, saying “I know he’s all right, that’s the only thing that matters. Besides, the state fair is in two days and--”

“--no way are you letting Mrs. Lopez’s peach jam beat yours,” Clark finished for her. “Mrs. Lopez beat her out for the blue ribbon last year and she’s been plotting ever since,” Clark explained to Bruce, who just shook his head and laughed.

Martha had hugged Bruce with sudden fierceness and whispered “Thank you” against his shirt, then embraced Clark and kissed his forehead. “Be well. Be at peace for a little while,” she murmured, and then went out into the rain with Alfred.

“She said that like I wasn’t often at peace,” Clark said, looking into the fire.

“You were under a lot of stress. You...poured your heart into your work,” Bruce said, pouring what looked like very expensive whisky into a glass. “Speaking of which, should we contact…”

“They all think I’m dead, don’t they?” Clark said.

A pause. “Yes.”

“Until I remember more, I think I’d rather not tell them,” Clark said. “If I don’t remember you, who knows what other important things I don’t remember?”

Bruce looked away out the window. “I wasn’t that important.”

“Don’t be ridiculous. I remembered you before my own mother, my own childhood home. _Obviously_ you’re important.”

_“Obviously,_ ” Bruce murmured, with an edge of self-mockery to it. He took a sip of his whiskey and drummed his fingers uneasily on the counter, looking restless. He hadn’t offered Clark a drink; Clark assumed that meant he knew Clark didn’t drink. That… didn’t feel _wrong,_ but it didn’t feel _right_ somehow, either. Clark frowned.

“Did we spend a lot of time here?” he asked to take his mind off the discomfort, gesturing around the lake house.

“No,” Bruce said, taking another sip. “Not enough, at least.” He was looking at Clark, and there was something complex and painful behind his eyes. “We didn’t have enough time together.”

“Well, now we have all the time in the world,” Clark said. “Alfred told me I should get to know you all over again.”

“He did, did he.” It wasn’t quite a question and Bruce wasn’t smiling.

“But that’s not the same as remembering,” Clark said. “I want to remember.”

“Maybe I don’t want you to remember,” Bruce said, looking into his glass. “Maybe I was horrible to you and I hope you never find out.”

Clark laughed. “Considering you’ve basically _told_ me you were horrible and we fought, you’re doing a terrible job of hiding it from me. Instead of being gloomy and moping around, shouldn’t you be trying to be charming and give me a better impression of you?”

Bruce’s eyebrows shot up. “Maybe I _am_ trying to be charming,” Bruce said. “Maybe this is as charming as I get.”

Clark shook his head, smiling. “It’s more charming than you know, I think.”

Bruce’s eyes went oddly wary. “Does it hurt?” he asked, and Clark boggled at the non-sequitur until he realized he’d absent-mindedly touched the scar on his cheek.

“No,” he said, running his fingers over it again, feeling the smooth new skin there. “Did I have it before I disappeared?”

Bruce took a much longer sip of his whisky and shook his head slightly. “I’m sure you got it during the disaster. When you were trying to save people.”

“I don’t remember that at all, still,” Clark said. “I hope… I hope I managed to save _someone_.”

Bruce reached out and touched the scar, almost as if he couldn’t help himself. “You did,” he murmured as his cold fingers traced the line across Clark’s cheek. Then he pulled his hand back. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s fine,” Clark said resisting the temptation to touch it again, to feel the place where Bruce’s fingers had been.

“Well,” Bruce said, draining his glass and putting it down with a _thump_ , “I’m going to bed.”

“All right, then,” Clark said to his back as he disappeared into the bedroom. “Good night to you too, Prince Charming.”

* * *

Clark woke from a dreamless sleep at the sound of rain being thrown against the windows. The storm had picked up in the night. He looked around the room; the lights still glowing dimly, staving off whatever fears still hid in the shadows. He rolled over on the couch, punching the austere and expensive throw pillow, but he couldn’t fall back asleep.

He lay in the half-dark, remembering Bruce’s eyes as he touched Clark’s face. 

There was a long, low growl of thunder that rolled across the lake. Then a sudden flash of light and a much louder crash.

And Clark heard Bruce start screaming in the other room.

* * *

Bruce had known it was going to be a bad night before he’d even closed his eyes. Three nights now without prowling the streets of Gotham, three nights without that hot rush of satisfaction and dark joy. Three nights in which evil had gone unchecked and unstopped. Because he couldn’t tear himself away from Clark Kent’s scarred face and gentle eyes.

On nights like this, even whisky wasn’t going to help.

He dreamed.

_He bends over Superman’s bright body, rending it. Bruce stomps and hears ribs crackle beneath his feet. The air smells like rust and ozone._

_“Why?” Clark chokes. “We could have been--”_

_Bruce slaps his face. Part of him is screaming, but he can’t make the dream stop. He’s going to keep going until Clark is limp and lifeless beneath him, and nothing is going to stop him this time. There’s blood at the corner of Clark’s mouth. Bruce leans forward and licks at it, wrapping his hands around Clark’s throat, intimate as a sigh. Clark is fighting back, but he’s weak, he’s faltering. Bruce slams his head against the floor and there’s a crash like the world is ending, and he can’t make it stop, he can’t make it stop--_

“Bruce! Bruce!” Clark’s voice: not choking on blood but clarion-bright. Still half-caught in the dream, Bruce lashed out, seizing Clark’s shoulders, pivoting to throw him to the bed, straddling him, holding him down.

“Bruce.” 

He blinked, the last remnants of the nightmare falling away. Clark’s face was inches from his, his eyes bright and clear, locked on Bruce’s.

“I remember this,” Clark whispered, and Bruce’s breath stopped. “I remember you--I remember us--”

Clark grabbed his shoulders and Bruce braced himself for the blow, but there was no time.

No time to brace himself at all before Clark kissed him with all the desperation of a clap of thunder.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bruce and Clark spend an awkward day together in the aftermath of their kiss.

Thunder rolled again as Clark reveled in the feel of Bruce’s mouth against his, the scrape of stubble against his jaw, the faint tastes of mint and whisky. It felt real, it felt _right,_ it felt like what he’d been walking toward and yearning for since he woke up in the moonlight days ago.

And for a moment, for just a moment, Bruce’s hands clutched his collar and pulled him closer.

But then Bruce was rolling off the bed and to his feet. “What the hell are you _doing?”_ he demanded.

“Why are you _lying_ to me?” Clark yelled. “I know we weren’t _friends._ ”

Bruce went very still, and there was something stricken and pained in his eyes. “Clark,” he said.

“I came in because you were screaming, and I couldn’t-- And then I remembered-- for just a second, I remembered--” Clark broke off, feeling his hands groping in the air in front of him, as if he could grab the memory back out of the air. “Like a lightning-flash, I remembered. You holding me down, your hands on me, your face there in front of me, my heart pounding--”

Bruce was staring at him. Half of his face was hidden in shadows, the other half lit by the light from the hall. That was familiar too, somehow.

“We weren’t _friends,_ ” Clark repeated. “Do you think I’m an _idiot_? Did you think I wouldn’t be able to figure it out?” He took a breath and plunged on before he could think better of it: “We were lovers, weren’t we?”

Bruce’s eyes widened as if Clark had slapped him and he made a hoarse noise that was half laugh and all pain. _“What?”_

“You almost had a _breakdown_ when I showed up, Bruce. You could hardly stand up, you were so overwhelmed. You know so much about me. For God’s sake, you’ve got my mother’s number!” Clark took a step forward and Bruce took one back in perfect mirror of him. “And Bruce. The way you look at me. It’s not-- You look at me like something beautiful and cherished and lost. Not...like a friend. Not at all.”

“Clark.” Bruce’s voice was ragged. “You’re wrong.”

Clark shook his head. “Not about the way you look at me. Not about the way you just kissed me.” He stepped forward again, and Bruce took another step away from him. “Not about the way I feel for you.”

“You don’t feel that way,” Bruce said. “You’re confused.”

“I am _not_ confused,” Clark snapped. “My body remembers the feel of yours against it. It knows the touch of your hands.”

Bruce closed his eyes and turned his head away; Clark saw him swallow hard in the dim light. “Oh God,” he whispered, almost too low to hear.

“Let me learn you again,” Clark said. “I want to know you again. I don’t know you, but I _know_ you. I know that you’re beautiful and brave and broken, and I want--I want--” His voice faltered and vanished into a quiet that was full of flickering lightning and the sound of distant thunder. “You’re _mine,_ Bruce,” he whispered. “I can see it in your eyes. Let me be yours again.”

“You were never mine, Clark,” said Bruce, flat and harsh, and Clark knew he should take that as a rejection, and yet his heart leapt.

He hadn’t denied the other assertion.

“Just--” Clark sat down slowly on the bed, as if Bruce was a wild animal that he could scare away if he moved too suddenly. “You thought I was dead, and now I’m here. We had something together, before.”

“We had _nothing._ ”

“That’s a _lie,_ ” Clark snarled. “I don’t remember much, but I remember being with you in the dark, my heart pounding.” He couldn’t put it into words, exactly, but he remembered the intimacy of it, their bodies locked together. “I remember thinking how beautiful you were.”

A startled, hoarse laugh. “No.”

“Half of your face was in shadow, like it is now,” Clark said. “But I could see the other half clearly, and I knew it was beautiful.” He looked up at Bruce, who had closed his eyes. “Please, Bruce. I just want to get to know you again. I want to touch you again. I want--” Need rose up in him like a wave, dizzying, and he stammered, “I want you to touch me, Bruce.”

Bruce’s hands clenched at his sides and he took a step back.

“It’s not _fair,_ ” Clark said desperately. “It’s not fair that you remember and I don’t. You know the sounds I make under your hands, you know what my face looks like when I--”

_“God,_ ” Bruce said, his voice ragged with pain and a yearning that made Clark’s breath come faster.

“Teach me again, Bruce,” said Clark.

Bruce took a deep breath, then another. “If you won’t get off my bed, I’ll just sleep on the couch,” he said.

“You can’t deny how you feel forever,” Clark said. “You can’t deny yourself happiness forever, Bruce.”

Bruce laughed, and there was a sharp metallic edge to it. He leveled a finger at Clark. “You,” he said, “have _no idea_ how long I can deny myself.”

And then he turned and left Clark alone in his bedroom.

* * *

Bruce woke up slowly, feeling leather against his face. Had he fallen asleep in the cave again? No, he was on the couch, one hand dangling off and--

Bruce froze as he felt his fingers brush against soft hair.

Slowly, carefully, he moved to peer over the edge of the couch. There on the floor, curled up on a blanket, was Clark Kent. His back was against the couch as if he were guarding Bruce from something, as if he just wanted to be close.

He was smiling.

Bruce watched his sleeping face for a long moment. Slowly he became aware that the dim rainy light of the last few days had given way to weak and cloudy sunlight. There was a square of pale light on the floor, brightening and dimming as the cloud cover thinned and thickened. It inched toward Clark Kent’s sleeping face as Bruce watched. Soon it would touch him, would bathe him in sunlight. Would the scar on his face fade away with its caress? When Clark’s eyes opened once more, would Bruce see memory in them?

What else would he see, he wondered as the square of sunlight crept closer.

When it was just a few feet from Clark’s face, Bruce quietly got up and closed the drapes, and the bright patch vanished.

He came back and lay down on the couch, still watching Clark’s sleeping face. Outside, the sunlight weakened and faltered, the clouds rolling in again. Soon Bruce could hear the first drops of rain pattering down, cutting them off from the world once more.

He closed his eyes and let the sound wash over him. One hand trailed off the sofa’s edge as he drowsed.

At some point, he felt Clark’s fingers intertwine with his, felt his breath almost stop. They lay there together, fingers touching, not speaking. As if, as long as they didn’t look at each other, this could continue.

And it did, until Alfred arrived with breakfast.

* * *

“I thought Mr. Kent might be getting a touch of cabin fever,” Alfred explained as Clark wolfed down his third English muffin. “Cooped up here in the gloom, after all, sir,” he said with a look at Bruce that seemed a touch reproachful.

“That was kind of you,” Clark said, picking up one of the books Alfred had brought. “But I’m not bored at all, honestly. Bruce is endlessly entertaining.”

“Oh is he,” Alfred said, looking at Bruce.

Bruce, however, showed no sign of taking the bait. He was staring at his tablet, frowning.

“Is the news bad, sir?” said Alfred, all traces of mockery gone in an instant.

“Falcone’s up to something,” Bruce muttered. “That’s three executions of major rival bosses in the last two weeks.” His face was grim and serious, and Clark felt a giddy wave of something that was part deja vu and all lust go over him. Bruce bit at a knuckle, looking concerned. “I’m going to have to go out tonight,” he muttered. Then he looked up and suddenly seemed to remember Clark was there; the sternness gave way to a bright smile, “--because there’s a big charity ball that I absolutely promised I would go to. I’m so sorry, Clark.”

“Do I get to spend the day with you?”

Bruce looked at him and for a moment naked hunger flickered in his eyes, as if his momentary seriousness had made it even harder to hide his desire. “Absolutely.”

“Then I guess I can spare you for one night. As long as it’s for charity.”

“Oh, it’s charitable, all right,” said Bruce, and his voice was somehow half bright and half dark and absolutely the most intoxicating thing Clark had ever heard.

They spent the day together, and Clark never mentioned that he had come awake with his fingers interlaced with Bruce’s, unsure which of them had reached out in his sleep. They argued about politics in a good-natured fashion; they compared Gotham and Metropolis architecture and argued about that too; they argued about what exactly proper strawberry shortcake was (Bruce considered sponge cake an abomination and swore by only hand-made biscuits as a base). Clark revelled in poking at the barely-banked embers of Bruce’s intellect and passion, causing it to flare up and immolate the bored facade he donned much of the time. He learned a lot about Bruce Wayne: about his love for Gotham, his view of the world, his patent affection for Alfred, the glints of pain when the Manor was ever mentioned.

He didn’t learn anything about his relationship with Bruce.

The rain had faded out and the day had shifted into quiet fog shrouding the lake as the pearly light dimmed into dusk. Clark looked up from one of the books Alfred had brought--a history of Gotham--and caught Bruce looking at him with a strange mix of affection and trepidation. The look was quickly wiped clean and Bruce stood, stretching. “Well, off to do my charity work,” he said lightly.

Clark rose too, coming toward him. “Do I get a goodbye kiss?” he asked.

Bruce’s face went wary. “No,” he said.

A flash of hurt pinged in Clark’s heart; he laughed it off, trying to keep the mood light. “But the world is dangerous, Bruce,” he said. “The last time we parted it was on bad terms and then I vanished and you thought I was dead. Who knows what horrible thing could befall you at your charity ball?”

Bruce said nothing; Clark came closer, resting his hands lightly on Bruce’s shoulders.

“I don’t want us to have regrets like that again,” Clark said, leaning in. His mouth was so close to Bruce’s that he could feel his breaths. “I want you to always go out into the world with my kiss on your mouth. I want--”

His words stopped short as Bruce closed the tiny gap between him and brought his lips to Clark’s in the gentlest brush of a kiss. Bruce’s fingers touched his jaw, a whisper-light caress, and Clark went very still.

“There,” said Bruce. “No regrets.”

“No--” Clark stopped and swallowed as Bruce stepped away, his heart pounding ridiculously fast. “No regrets.”

Bruce turned at the door, umbrella in hand. “But we weren’t lovers,” he said, very low. “I swear.”

“I know,” Clark lied in turn.

* * *

The quiet of the lake house was different with Bruce gone: more still, more hesitant. With Bruce there the silence felt _right._ Without him, it felt… empty.

Clark turned on the news, just to see what was going on the world. Two days surrounded by nothing but glass and rain had left him restless. And yet unwilling to go out into the world again. _Not yet,_ something seemed to whisper. _Not until you find what you’ve lost._ His history with Bruce? That felt right...and yet not enough.

The news was covering the rebuilding of the areas of Gotham recently destroyed--Clark assumed in the disaster that had left him presumed dead. “Since Doomsday,” intoned the announcer, and Clark felt a chill crawl up his spine at the inflection in her voice. What kind of disaster would it take to refer to it as Doomsday?

Footage rolled, and the chill settled into something closer to a shudder as Clark saw the footage of some monster rampaging. The cameras couldn’t get close, juttering back and forth as shock waves hit them from the--battle? Were those tiny figures _fighting_ whatever this thing was? There was a gleam of virulent green and Clark felt nausea grip him as memory pressed in like a migraine: pain and rubble and ruin and hopelessness; he couldn’t let more people die, he had to--

He pushed at the memories, struggling to turn them from a chaotic jumble to something meaningful, but it was no use, they were fading away again, leaving him shaking and out of breath, the scar on his cheek burning like fresh acid. He snapped off the screen, feeling sick and uncertain, knowing only that he couldn’t handle much more of whatever that was. Had he been trying to help people in that maelstrom of violence? How was that even possible?

The moon was rising, making a path of light across the dark water of the lake. Bruce still wasn’t back. Clark riffled through the stack of books Alfred had brought, enjoying the feel of the paper and the designs of the covers: a scattered collection of Robert Parker hardboiled detective stories; Ursula LeGuin and Temple Grandin mixed in together; _The Turn of the Screw_ ; a book about theories of time. They were all dogeared and worn, the editions mostly from twenty or thirty years ago. Here and there were enthusiastic underlinings in ink or notes in the margins in a looping, precise handwriting: _Doubtful_ or _check later_ or sometimes just a few exclamation points. Clark picked up a couple of slim volumes of Mary Oliver’s poetry, turning them over in his hands. One fell open to a poem called “When Death Comes,” the one that starts

_When death comes_   
_like the hungry bear in autumn;_   
_when death comes and takes all the bright coins from his purse_   
  
_to buy me, and snaps the purse shut_

Clark’s eyes ran down the page to the end, where someone had underlined the last words:

_When it’s over, I don’t want to wonder  
If I have made of my life something particular, and real._

_I don’t want to find myself sighing and frightened, or full of argument._

_I don’t want to end up simply having visited this world._

Clark sat for a long time, imagining a younger version of Bruce reading those lines, nodding to himself as the moonlight touched his face through the glass walls--no, that wasn’t right. He wouldn’t have been here, he would have been at the Manor. In his childhood home. Restless as Clark was now, wanting something _more,_ unsure how much pain he would have to endure to get it. Who was that Bruce? Where had he poured all that restive energy?

The moonlight was beckoning-bright, the clouds clear for a moment. Clark was outside the lake house almost before he realized it, sodden grass under his feet, following the tug of his heart toward the ruins of the Manor, brooding and broken in the night.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Clark visits the Manor at night and runs into an intruder.

There was no formal pathway from the lake house to the Manor, but the way was easy to find: a well-trodden trail through the grass, through groves of poplar trees shivering in the moonlight. A circuit Bruce had clearly walked many times. Clark imagined him striding along, coat flapping in the breeze on winter days, his shadow falling across the masses of tangled touch-me-nots in late summer. Clark glimpsed marble walls between the trees to the right: a mausoleum of some sort. He passed that by with a respectful nod and kept walking. 

The Manor loomed against the starry sky like an enchanted castle in a fairy tale, ruined ramparts touched with silver. Clark pushed his way up the hill, thistles snatching at his borrowed clothing as if to warn him off, and found himself on the threshold at last.

Cinders crunched under his feet as he stepped across it and into the Manor.

Moonlight shone down through the shattered rafters; glass crunched under his feet. He was in the ruins of a great hall, a crumbling corpse still dressed with the remnants of finery: a corner of a charred Persian rug under his feet, tapestries with scorch marks emblazoned up them, the loose threads picked by birds to make their nests now. Had there been balls here? Had Bruce’s parents waltzed together under the chandelier that now leaned drunkenly, a scattering of crystal drops under it like frozen tears? The fire had been recent, Clark remembered: had Bruce had lovers here? Had he run up this charred staircase, the marble blackened with smoke, to usher someone to his bed? Clark put his hand on the balustrade, feeling the stone cold and unyielding under his hand, as if no human touch could ever warm it. How long had it been since laughter had rung through these halls? And what immolation had left it nothing but ash and cinders?

The silence of the Manor was different from the silence of the lake house. The lake house was empty in its stillness, but the Manor’s silence was full. Full of pain, full of grief and suffering and happy memories turned to ash, full of…

The sound of wings. 

Clark whirled as the silence was--not broken, but somehow completed by the whisper of dozens of near-soundless wings. A cloud of bats whirred by his head, brushing his hair with a chaos of dark motion. He stopped still, waiting, unmoving, letting them pass around him like a river and pour upward through the crumbling roof into the sky. He looked up after them, feeling something tug at him imperiously, demanding. The sky, the stars, the wind--what was it he wanted?

He turned from the sweeping, gutted staircase with a sigh, letting his hand fall from the balustrade--and with no warning at all found himself face to face with a dark figure, crouched in the shattered window, nothing but a gleam of eyes within the darkness to tell Clark it was human at all.

The silence seemed to thicken, waiting, and Clark knew with a sudden lunatic certainty that if the figure were to speak, it would be with the voice of a forgotten nightmare.

* * *

Batman stared at the sight of Clark Kent at the foot of the Manor staircase, his eyes wide and his face pale, and felt a rush of ludicrous gratitude that the mask hid the shock in his own eyes.

“Who--” Clark started to say, and fell silent again.

_You’re so young,_ the thought came to him so strongly that for a moment he thought he’d said it out loud. How had he not seen how young this man was, how had he not seen the uncertainty and earnestness in his eyes? He’d been blinded by his own assumptions, blinded by a costume and a cape into seeing a godling instead of a man struggling to use his power wisely.

Just as the awe and fear in Clark’s eyes at this moment revealed he was seeing a figment from a nightmare rather than a paranoid fool who didn’t know hope when it stood in front of him and tried to ask him for help.

“Wait--” Clark put out a hand, but Bruce didn’t pause to see if he would dare to step towards him (of course he would, even powerless and alone, of course he would confront his demon) before he was swinging onto the roof, into the third floor ruins, sure footed and certain, knowing each broken floorboard and shattered tile as well as he knew his own heart. Fleeing.

He waited until he saw, from one of the fractured windows, Clark Kent give up his search and push his way back through the weeds toward the lake house.

Then he slipped back into the ruins and through the door in the grandfather clock into the cave complex, back to the disguise and the mask that would give him a few more hours of peace with the man he had tried to murder.

* * *

It was no good using the secret door into the lake house; Clark was unlikely to accept Bruce appearing as if by magic in his own bedroom. So he drove the Bentley from the cave around and back to the lake house, feeling foolish and false, his heart hammering at the mere prospect of seeing Clark again. _Damned fool_. He made his way toward the lake house, letting his steps weave and sway, the picture of a tipsy philanthropist.

Clark met him at the door, still pale, and Bruce’s heart turned over at the sight of him. “Bruce,” he said, “There was something-- Someone in the ruins of the Manor.”

“In the _what?”_ Bruce had had time to think about his response: he let shock and some level of reproach fill his voice at this trespass.

“I’m sorry,” said Clark, his glance falling. “I-- went to the Manor. It wasn't raining, and I wanted to see-- I’m sorry.”

“That’s--that’s all right,” Bruce said, as if mustering forgiveness. “It’s just… it’s condemned, you know? It’s dangerous.”

“There was someone there.” Clark’s hands waved in the air, tracing the shape. “Some kind of…man in black. Like a shadow.”

“Someone’s living in the Manor?” Bruce narrowed his eyes, alarmed.

“I don’t think anyone’s living there, no. It felt...empty. But there was someone there, Bruce, I swear it!”

“Hey, hey. I believe you.” 

“He was familiar,” Clark said, and Bruce felt the world spin to a halt. “I...remember him from somewhere.”

Bruce forced a laugh. “How is that possible?”

“I think he was there when I went missing. In that time I don’t remember. He was wearing a cape and cowl. All in black.”

“Ah.” With that much of a description, there was no denying-- “I think you’ve spotted the elusive Batman, Clark.”

For a moment, Clark’s eyes were wary and uncertain. “What?”

“I know, it’s a silly name. An urban legend. A guy who dresses up as a bat and fights crime in Gotham. Some people say they’ve spotted him, and a lot of people said he was there on the day you went missing.”

“What the hell was he doing in Wayne Manor?”

Bruce shrugged. “It did burn down under suspicious circumstances. It’s possible he’s been trying to find out more about it. It’s just the kind of random thing a freak like that would get obsessed with,” Bruce said, letting bitterness seep into his voice.

“Have you ever run into him before?”

Bruce was suddenly very glad Alfred wasn’t there to raise an eyebrow at him. “I’ve never had the honor,” he said sarcastically.

“He was…” Clark shook his head. “Terrifying. Primal. Chthonic.” Bruce felt his eyebrows go up against his will. “Like…something from the underworld.”

“I know what _chthonic_ means, thank you.”

Clark ignored his acerbic tone, his eyes far away. “He seemed like the only real thing in the world. Everything else...faded out. Even me.”

“Hey,” Bruce said, unnerved at the look in his eyes. “Hey, you’re real. We’re both real.” He squeezed Clark’s hands--when had he reached out and taken them in his? He didn’t remember. 

Clark’s eyes focused on his and Bruce wanted to take a step back, but held his ground. “You make me feel real again,” Clark said. He lifted Bruce’s hands and pressed them to his heart. “This is real.”

None of their battle had hurt like this. Nothing Superman had ever done to Batman felt as agonizing as stepping away from Clark Kent felt to Bruce Wayne at that moment. “You don’t understand what you’re saying,” Bruce said.

Clark frowned. “I might not remember it, but I wanted you from the first moment I saw you, I _know_ it.” He shook his head as if in wonder. “Bruce. I’ve been here for three days now. I’ve talked to you. I’ve heard the passion in your voice and seen the intelligence in your eyes. I’ve met the person who cares for you more than anyone else in the world. I’ve read your books.” He lifted his hands to take in the lake house, barren and gleaming in the dark. “And I’ve felt how lonely this place is. If this place is your heart, it’s empty. If the Manor is your heart, it’s broken. And I don’t believe either of those are true. No matter what our past is, whether we were friends or lovers, whether we’d quarreled or not, I’ve come to truly know you now, and your heart isn’t empty or broken, it’s full of passion and intensity and _purpose,_ and I--” He faltered, looking, for a moment, very young and uncertain. Then he took a breath and went on: “and I love it, Bruce. I love y--”

“--You _don’t_ ,” Bruce said, and found himself taken aback at the pain in his own voice. “Clark, you have to believe me. Whatever there was between us before you--before you were gone, please believe me that you would have been appalled to hear what you’re saying right now. You’d be horrified to know you were claiming to love someone like me. And someday you’re going to get your memory back, and when that happens…” He heard his voice stagger to a halt for a second. “When that happens you’ll look at me and all that trust and hope in your eyes will be gone, and you’ll say, ‘Why did you lie to me? And why did you let me say those lies to you?’”

Clark laughed. “You idiot,” he said. “Every time you push me away, every time you insist I don’t know what I’m doing, you only prove even more that you’re a good man who actually cares about me. If you were half as horrible as you claim, you’d have grabbed the opportunity and gotten me into bed with you while I was still deluded.”

“Maybe I don’t want you,” Bruce said.

Clark reached out and hooked his fingers into Bruce’s collar. “Go ahead,” he said. “Tell me that you don’t want me.” He tugged slightly. “Tell me you don’t want to strip the clothes right off me and do delightfully obscene things to me, you don’t want to make me scream your name, you don’t want to get off on the sounds I’d make while I came. Tell me that.” 

Bruce felt his throat move against Clark’s fingers as he swallowed. He looked into Clark’s avid eyes and couldn’t think of a single thing to say.

Clark let go of his shirt with such suddenness that Bruce stumbled backwards a step. “None of that is lies and you know it,” he said. “But that’s all right. Because whatever dance you need to do, Bruce, I’ll do it. Maybe you even believe some of the lies you’re telling yourself. Maybe you even believe you’re not in love with me.”

“I was not in love with you before you disappeared,” Bruce said, putting every shred of authenticity he could into it. It was even possible this was true, he told himself. It was hard to perfectly separate out all the different contradictory things he had felt that night. It was possible love hadn’t been one of them.

“Whatever dance you need, Bruce,” said Clark, and turned away.

There was a patter against the windows, abrupt as stones being thrown, but neither of them flinched. The rain had started again.

* * *

_You're an investigative journalist. Figure it out._ Clark wrapped the blanket more tightly around him on the couch and picked at the information he had: the jumble of hints and clues and evidence and memories he had access to. Trying to make it all fit together, to find the truth. That was what journalists were supposed to do. Bruce Wayne, Clark had concluded, was not a fundamentally truthful man. That didn’t mean he wasn’t honest or trustworthy. But Clark could tell that Bruce and the truth had a complicated relationship. Still, there were moments when something Clark said seemed to strike the truth in Bruce, like a tuning fork suddenly resonating. It was a start.

_There was something between us--probably something physical--but he didn’t think it was love. After I went missing, he realized it was, but it was too late. Until I showed up at his door and forced him to face how he felt._ Obviously they had parted on bad terms. Had Clark wanted more from their relationship than the sheerly physical? Had they argued?

Clark listened to the rain beat down, a long slow shimmer of sound, and realized he wasn’t sure he wanted to remember what had happened. He thought again about the touch of Bruce’s lips on his before he left that evening--tentative, uncertain. Gentle. Maybe it was for the best that they start again anew. Because he _was_ going to start again with Bruce. He wasn’t going to give up. There’d be no regrets this time.

His last thought as he fell asleep was that he hadn’t followed up on the strange “Batman” in the ruins of the Manor. 

_Another mystery._

* * *

A strange, haunting wail jolted him awake in the pale gray of a drizzling misty morning. He lay on the couch, his heart hammering, until it came again and he realized: a loon. There were other birds singing just outside the windows, taking advantage of the lessening of the rain to court their mates, mark their territory.

Clark rose, rubbing at his eyes--then froze when he realized he could hear voices from Bruce’s bedroom. 

A woman’s voice.

It was vibrant and authoritative, with a lilting accent to it that he couldn’t place. He caught the words “sentiment” and “duty.”

Then Bruce snapped, loud enough that Clark could actually hear him: “Diana, don’t lecture me about duty or responsibility--mine or anyone else’s. He gave his _life_ to--”

Without thinking, goaded by the anguish he heard running under Bruce’s words, Clark came around the corner.

To find a woman sitting on Bruce’s bed as though she belonged there.


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Clark meets the mysterious woman in Bruce's bedroom--who raises questions he doesn't want to have answered.

Clark stopped short in the doorway, wishing he had kept away, unable to move any further.

The woman was sitting on Bruce’s bed with her bare feet curled underneath her, leaning on one hand. She was wearing black slacks and a loose white shirt that shimmered with silvery designs; her long black hair tumbled down her back. A black leather purse rested next to her. Her free hand was lifted in the air, gesturing angrily at Bruce, who stood facing her, his shoulders lowered and his face guarded. When he saw Clark in the doorway beyond the woman his expression shifted suddenly into alarm, and the woman whirled to stare at Clark.

She was beautiful, of course. But even more than that, she was self-possessed and self-contained, with power in every move she made. There was a regal confidence in the way she carried herself--anyone who Bruce would trust enough to allow into his bedroom, _onto his bed,_ would have to have that kind of comfort and control, Clark thought with involuntary bitterness. Would have to be whole and complete and--

The woman’s face lit up with joy. _”Clark,”_ she breathed, and launched herself across the wide bed to throw her arms around him.

Clark blinked down at her--she had lifted him up in the air with her hug as if he were a child. She put him down again and cleared her throat. “You...don’t remember me either,” she said, half question and half statement.

“No,” he said, and felt fresh regret tear at his heart. Everything about her was unforgettable, just like Bruce. He looked from her face to Bruce’s and blurted out with abrupt, relieved certainty: “You’re not lovers.”

She laughed, throwing her head back. “Did you think-- Ah, Clark, I’m so sorry,” she said, and kissed his forehead.

“Are you related to Bruce? Is that why I don’t remember you?”

“Not by blood,” she said, throwing a quick smile Bruce’s way. “But he and I are kin of a sort. As are we all.”

Bruce had been smiling fondly at her, but at her last words the smile disappeared. “Diana,” he said warningly, and the air between them seemed suddenly to crackle again, full of tension.

“He should know. You must tell him. You cannot leave him half of himself.”

“Hey,” Clark said, anger seizing him out of nowhere. “I’m not half of anything, I’m _myself._ Just because I don’t remember some things--”

“--You would turn your back on your heritage, on your power, on your _responsibility_ ,” Diana snapped. “Bruce may allow this travesty, but I do not!” Grabbing her purse, she opened it and pulled out--

Sunlight.

No, Clark realized, blinking, it was a cord of some sort, braided of golden rope that seemed to shine like the sun.

“Diana!” Bruce started to move forward, but Diana held up one hand and he stopped, looking frustrated and furious. “This isn’t right, this isn’t natural,” he snarled.

“Nothing is more natural than the truth,” Diana said, and reached out--Clark flinched slightly--to coil the rope around his wrist.

They looked at each other. Clark waited for something dramatic to happen, but nothing did. The rope was just shiny rope, it didn’t burn. He took a careful, relieved breath.

“Who are you?” Diana asked.

Clark almost laughed. “I thought I was the one with amnesia. Clark Joseph Kent.”

“ _Who are you?_ ” Diana said again, and there was a fierceness in her face that made Clark want to take a step away from her. But that would mean taking a step away from Bruce as well, standing behind her with anguish in his eyes, and Clark wouldn’t do that.

“I told you who I am. I don’t know what you’re trying to make me say, but I don’t remember being anyone else, and tying me up with a piece of pretty sparkly rope isn’t going to change that.”

“A piece of pretty sparkly rope,” Bruce said, and there was a sudden sputter of laughter under the growl of his voice.

Diana didn’t smile, but warmth touched the corners of her eyes as if she couldn’t help it. “Well, it _is_ both pretty and sparkly,” she said.

“And it’s true that he doesn’t remember,” Bruce said. “If he doesn’t remember, he has no other truth to give you.”

Clark tried to shake his hand free, but couldn’t. “Diana, let me give you some truth. I woke up in a ditch, exhausted beyond belief, and all I could remember was that I had to get to Gotham, and that someone called Bruce was important to me. These last few days--” He felt his breath catch. “I needed them. I needed this time for myself, to have a time that was just _me_ , that wasn’t work or--or whatever else I can’t remember.” He stopped, feeling his heart pounding as if at the sound of a thousand distant screams. “I don’t remember Bruce, or you--obviously I didn’t _want_ to remember that part of my life. I don’t know why, but I needed this time without those memories. And I needed this time to find Bruce--the real Bruce, not the one that goes out to parties or makes stupid statements to newspapers. I came here to find him, and I did. And he says I didn’t love him before, and maybe that’s even true, but I love him now.”

Bruce made a small sound and put his hand up as though Clark had tried to hit him.

Clark charged on without taking a breath: “He’s passionate and stubborn and full of secrets and he has extremely sketchy opinions about strawberry shortcake and _I love him_ , Diana, and _that_ is the truth.”

There was a silence in which the only sound was Bruce’s breathing, fast and hard. Diana nodded slowly and released the rope from around his wrist. “It is,” she said, and turned away.

Bruce stepped forward, bristling, glaring at her. “That wasn’t right,” he said. 

His fists were clenched, his eyes furious, but Diana responded like a Great Dane facing a kitten: she smiled and shrugged with a fluid nonchalance, uncaring that it looked like this man might take a swing at her. “It was true,” she said. She shook her head at him, almost affectionately. “We’ve talked about this, Bruce. I’m not here to follow your ideas of what’s _right._ They overlap with mine most of the time. But don’t delude yourself that they always will.”

Bruce continued to glower, his jaw clenched.

“Look,” Clark said after a moment, “I think it’s pretty obvious that there’s a lot going on here I don’t understand.” He rubbed at his wrist where Diana’s rope had been. “And I think it’s pretty obvious you’re not going to tell me what it is.”

Both Diana and Bruce looked at him, and their expressions slowly shifted from “amused” and “belligerent” to matching sheepish looks. It was not an expression that sat easy on their strong faces, and Clark fought an incongruous desire to laugh. 

“If you truly wish not to remember,” Diana said, “It is not my place to force knowledge on you. The gods know that I--” She stopped, and something like sympathy touched the corners of her eyes, and a pain that seemed older than her lovely face. “But I believe you will find that your sense of responsibility to the world will outweigh your need for solitude, even if you wish it would not.” She laid a hand along his face, smiling at him. “I look forward to working with you again,” she said. Then she nodded at Bruce. “You’re very lucky,” she said.

Bruce stepped forward and touched his fingers to that golden rope, his eyes bleak and challenging. Then he pulled his hand away. “I can’t,” he said.

“I know,” said Diana.

Bruce lifted his chin. “But I do love him,” he said. “And I don’t need anything to make me say so.”

She kissed his forehead and Bruce browed his head beneath her touch as if receiving a benediction. “I doubt he did either, Bruce.”

When she was gone--there was no car Clark could see, she simply walked out and vanished into the curtains of rain as if they couldn’t touch her--Clark grimaced at Bruce. “Can you stop talking about me as if I weren’t here now?”

“I’m sorry,” said Bruce. He sat down heavily on the couch, looking at his hands. “I’m sorry.”

“And I do love you, and nothing _made_ me say that.”

Bruce was still looking at his hands. “Take a walk with me?” he said.

“I’ll go anywhere with you,” Clark said, and Bruce’s mouth crooked into something close to smile, but with sadness in its lines.

* * *

They walked through a grove of trees, the rain drumming on their umbrellas, the air full of the scent of bracken and decaying leaves, rich and loamy. At the edge of the grove a huge oak tree loomed before them, and Clark could see beyond it the marble walls of the mausoleum, overgrown with ivy and shadows.

Bruce stopped and put his hand on the trunk of the tree, his long fingers caressing the wet and lichen-crusted bark. “I used to climb this tree all the time,” he said.

He dropped his umbrella and jumped up to catch the lowest branch, swinging up with an agility that made Clark’s eyebrows rise. He clambered up until he was well above the ground, sitting down on a wide branch. Looking down, he beckoned to Clark.

Clark followed more slowly, his movements clumsy and unsure on the rain-slippery bark, but eventually he ended up sitting next to Bruce. The rain beat down on them, plastering Bruce’s hair to his head, though he didn’t seem to notice. Clark had a thousand questions he wanted to ask about the relationship between Bruce, and Diana, and himself, but he didn’t know where to start (some kind of secret society? Like the Illuminati? Craziness). So he sat in the tree, surrounded by the pattering of rain on leaves, and simply waited. The mausoleum was behind them, brooding in its silence. The burned and desolate Manor was to their right hand. And in front of them at the foot of the hill, the lake quivered in the rain, the lake house a glass box on the shore.

“This is what I am,” Bruce said. “Look at that lake house, Clark. There’s nothing in it. It’s all a show and a sham, a diorama of an empty life. I hurt you, before. I love you, too. But maybe that’s not enough.” His hair was dripping, his eyes far away.

“That lake house isn’t all you are,” Clark retorted. “Just like that mausoleum behind us isn’t all you are. There’s something beneath it, I know. There’s something real beneath it.” Surprise touched with amusement flickered across Bruce’s face as Clark went on: “And it’s possible love isn’t enough. But that doesn’t mean it isn’t there.”

He kissed the side of Bruce’s face, feeling cold rain on his lips. Bruce didn’t turn to kiss him back, but he didn’t pull away, either. After a long moment, he sighed.

“Alfred always used to make me hot chocolate when I went wandering off in the cold. Shall we go back and I’ll see if I can figure out how to do it on my own?”

* * *

As it turned out, Clark remembered how to make hot chocolate better than Bruce did.

* * *

Clark woke up on the couch from a confused dream of green and gold light, his wrist oddly warm where Diana’s rope had encircled it. Had there been voices calling him in the dream?

 _Responsibility. Duty. Solitude. Love._ He looked out at the lake, still and quiet in the dark, its surface barely touched by the misty rain. _Something beneath._

Shrugging on his jeans and a sweater, he went out into the night, climbing the long hill to the waiting Manor once more.

* * *

The silence felt...different, this time. Not brooding, but waiting. Anticipating. A breathless quiet. 

He touched the blackened marble mantel above the fireplace, feeling soot gritty beneath his fingers. There were two scorched chess pieces there as well: a black knight on its side and a white pawn. Clark went to touch them, then drew his fingers back.

Beside the fireplace was a grandfather clock, its hands melted and bent, pointing to no time and every time. Clark reached out and rested his hand on its case.

And at his touch the clock swung open, revealing stairs leading down into darkness.


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Clark descends below the Manor and finds many things, including some answers.

The clock stood open before him, as if time itself had granted him entry. Clark Kent stared into the darkness and took one tentative step onto the first stair.

At the pressure of his foot, lights flickered into existence: wan lights with gaps of darkness between them where bulbs had long ago given out, but enough to see by.

Step by careful step, Clark descended below the Manor.

The stairs were solid stone, carved into the bedrock as if to last millennia, but Clark’s footsteps were the only thing disturbing the dust and ash that coated them. The echoes of his steps disappeared into a vast darkness that Clark could sense opening up all around him, broken only by the faint dripping of water and a distant rustling of wings. He had no idea how far it stretched, but it felt like he were falling into it, a tiny raindrop in a dizzying void. 

He had to sit down on the stairs and catch his breath for a long moment, feeling his heart pounding. _Turn around, turn back, it’s not too late…_

But it _was_ too late, Clark knew. It was always too late to turn back. They always had to move forward.

So he moved forward.

The cave floor was uneven, but not natural. He bent down and touched it: old concrete that crumbled slightly under his fingers. He could see the smudges of dust and soot on his fingertips in the dim light.

Moving slowly forward, he almost tripped over the computer.

Dropping to his haunches, he squinted at the snarl of wires emerging from the back, torn off at the roots. The screen was a crazed whorl of glass. Someone had worked here, long ago.

(The smell of concrete dust and ash and sorrow hooked at his memories. He didn’t want to remember He had to remember He didn’t want to).

Groping forward, his hand collided with something that felt like plexiglass--and he recoiled as a light came on to reveal a dark bat-shaped figure right in front of him.

He fell backwards with a warding hand thrown in the air, hearing the echoes of his “No!” rattle through the cave, answered by the rustling squeaks of the bats. After a moment he lowered it and peered ahead to see that what had startled him was a suit, empty like a suit of armor, in a display case.

It was sleeker than the shape of the mysterious Batman he had met in the ruins earlier: more streamlined, less armored. A suit for dodging pain rather than absorbing it. Clark stared at it for a long time, the echo of golden warmth circling his wrist, insistent and demanding: _responsibility. Duty._

He reached out with a shaking hand and touched the glass as if he yearned to touch the suit, to press his hand to its heart.

“ _Bruce,_ ” he whispered.

He turned around and Batman was there behind him, the _real_ Batman, solid and armored and terrifying, and Clark flinched backwards into the case with an inarticulate noise of panic.

They stared at each other for a long moment, both of them locked in fight-or-flight, both of them frozen.

Clark put a hand out, saw it shaking in the air between them. Rested it on Batman’s chest. Batman--flinched, and almost took a step back, then stopped. Clark took a breath. “Bruce?” It was half question, half statement.

The visor slid open with eerie silence to reveal Bruce Wayne’s face, wry and uncertain, with fear at the corners of the eyes.

“Clark,” Bruce said: an answer and a new question.

* * *

“I shouldn’t be here,” was the first thing Clark said to him. He was shaking all over.

“Yes you should,” Bruce said. “Come here. I’ll show you--I’ll show you everything.”

They walked together, further into the darkness, walking away from the scene of Bruce’s greatest failure, the soot and the bloodstains on the floor. Walking away, but never leaving it behind. The passage to the bunker was narrow, long-disused; Bruce could hear Clark tripping over debris behind him as he followed. 

He was an inverted Orpheus, leading love deeper into the underworld, Batman thought. Further into death and grief. He didn’t look behind him.

The lights came on automatically as they entered the bunker, illuminating the sterile steel and tile. Bruce heard Clark take a deep breath behind him, but he crossed over to the computer, turning it on, calling up Diana’s file. He flipped through the photographs quickly, trusting Clark to follow along. And indeed, after only a few minutes, Clark said, “That’s not possible. Diana is--you’re telling me she’s a _hundred years old?_ ”

Bruce raised an eyebrow. “I suspect much older than that, actually. I haven’t asked her directly. It seemed...rude.”

“So wait.” Clark held up a hand, and Bruce watched him putting together this new information, watched that agile reporter’s mind leaping from conclusion to conclusion. “I saw on the news, footage of people fighting some kind of monster--you’re part of a secret group of...special people.”

“Gods,” said Bruce. “Legends. Aliens. Scientific wonders. And me.” He shrugged at Clark’s expression. “I’m just a man.”

“Yeah, right,” Clark whispered under his breath, his eyes flicking over the computers. “And I… I help you all,” he said. Still trying to put the puzzle together from the scattered pieces he had. “Do I work down here? Doing your research for you, helping you? Did I go to Gotham and into the battle, was that how I disappeared? Did you tell me not to go, and I went anyway? I think I remember the monster. I remember… I remember pain.” He touched his cheek, the pale scar that still traced across it.

Before he could think better of it, Bruce reached out and touched the unscarred side of Clark’s face with his gloved hand; Clark shuddered slightly. Bruce leaned forward and brought his mouth to the scar marring Clark’s perfect face. “There was a monster,” Bruce whispered.

Then he stepped back and touched the button that illuminated the floodlights on the far side of the bunker.

Clark turned, squinting into the pitiless light, his eyes widening as he took in the two cases. One of them held Robin’s soot-blackened uniform, and the other…

Bruce followed Clark as he stepped over to the case that held the red and blue uniform, still torn and battered. Clark stood before it for an ageless time. Bruce could see his shoulders trembling as he looked at it. When he finally spoke, it was a bare whisper, but Bruce could already hear the change in his voice, the weight of knowledge:

“My suit,” Clark said.

* * *

He put out his hand and rested it on the case, feeling cold glass beneath his hand. He could feel Bruce--Batman-- _Bruce_ behind him, utterly unmoving. Waiting. He stood for a long time, feeling the last days falling into place in new and different ways.

“Her name’s Diana?” he said once. And then:

“Ma must have told you not to tell me.” And finally:

“A fight. You said we _had a fight._ Telling the truth even when you lie.”

He could hear the tightness in his voice. There was a whisper of cloth (he remembered that sound now, the hiss of silk on concrete) and Bruce stepped away from him. Clark whirled to face him and Bruce--didn’t flinch, exactly.

“Don’t worry,” Clark snapped. “I don’t have my powers back, only my memories.” He stopped and swallowed, then managed to choke out: “ _Why?_ Why did you--”

“When I was a child, I had dreams of flying,” Bruce said abruptly, his voice flat. “We all do, of course. But in mine--it was after my parents died, and in my dreams I was lifted up out of the darkness into light and all my fear and doubt fell away and I _soared._ ” His voice broke, yearning, on the last word. “But when I woke up I was still--just me.” He looked at Clark for a long moment. “In my mind you were everything I wanted to be, everything I couldn’t be--above it all, above fear, above responsibility. So I hated you and I wanted to end you.” He said it with blunt simplicity, as if he had crafted the words in his head a thousand times. “I was wrong, Clark. I was utterly wrong. But that is _why._ ”

Clark stared at him for a long, long moment. Then he threw his arms wide. “You idiot,” he said.

Bruce’s eyebrows went up.

“I knew all _that_ within ten minutes of meeting you,” Clark said, feeling something like a laugh clawing at the back of his throat. “Not all the details, but--I _knew_ , Bruce. Do you think I don’t know what people see in me? Do you think there’s anything I can do about it but keep going, keep trying to save people? Exactly the same way you do?”

He took a step forward and Bruce took a half-step back, but only a half-step. “No, Bruce,” Clark said, “What I want to know is _why_ the...the shrine, the memorial, the damn _crypt_ in my name here?” He pointed upward. “I was _right there, alive_ in your living room! Just how long did you intend on keeping this place a mausoleum to the memory of someone who isn’t even dead?” Another step forward; this time Bruce didn’t move away. “I joked about looking for a hairshirt, and I here I find you’ve been using my memory as one all along.”

Bruce looked at him and shook his head, very slightly; not in negation so much as in disbelief. “I tried to kill you,” he said. “I _helped Doomsday kill you._ ”

Clark smiled, very slightly. “I was only mostly dead, apparently.”

“ _Don’t joke--_ ” Bruce started to say, and Clark kissed him, very lightly.

Bruce went still. “I couldn’t--” He took a deep breath, looking at Clark. “I couldn’t let you love me when you didn’t know what I’d done.”

“Here’s the interesting thing,” Clark said. “Which is that you don’t get to ‘let’ me love you or not. I just do.”

“I tried to kill you,” Bruce said again.

“Well, that was stupid of you and you didn’t do very well at it. And then you saved my mother, and fought by my side to save the world, and--apparently--did a ton of research about me and fell in love with me after I died, which was also kind of stupid of you, but you seem to have done pretty well at that.” 

Bruce was staring at him and Clark wasn’t sure he was making much sense, but their _lives_ didn’t make a whole lot of sense and he just needed to get through to him somehow, cut through that clear glass wall Bruce kept himself sealed inside, batter it down with nonsense and the force of his need, if necessary.

“Come on, Bruce!” Clark said, whirling to go back to the case where his suit was entombed. “Enough with the grief and regret between us, _enough_ of that, we need to just--” Carried away by his own words, he leveled a punch at the case as if to shatter it, break it into a thousand pieces.

His fist slammed into the glass with a dull thud and the case didn’t budge.

“Ow,” said Clark, shaking out his hand. “Ow. Ow.”

“Still no powers, I see,” said Bruce. There was something under his words that wasn’t bitterness or remorse, and at the sound of it Clark’s heart rose.

“That looked much more dramatic in my head,” he said, wincing exaggeratedly and pulling a wry face. 

Bruce crossed the room to stand in front of him and took Clark’s hand in his. “I believe if we get you into sunlight you’ll get your powers back. Until then, I think you’re going to have some impressively bruised knuckles.” 

He lifted Clark’s aching hand to his lips and kissed the fingers, very gently.

“Let’s get your suit out of the case and then we’ll talk about what you’d like to do next.”

Clark smiled through the pain--he’d felt worse, after all; he remembered now. “I’ve got some ideas about that,” he said.


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> With Clark's memories restored, he and Bruce take some time together as the rain slowly comes to an end.

His hand still hurt. Clark stared at the bruised knuckles in some wonderment. Outside of the lake house, the rain fell in a steady hiss into the morning, a white noise that blotted out the rest of the world. He couldn’t hear anything beyond it: couldn’t hear his mother’s heartbeat, or the weeping of children, or the screams of the dying. Not even if he’d tried.

He closed his eyes and listened to the rain for a long, quiet space.

“What will you do now?” Bruce was sitting next to him on the floor, staring at the flames in the fireplace.

“Go back to Metropolis, I guess. I have friends that will be happy to know I’m still alive. Get back to work.”

“Work.” It wasn’t quite a question.

Clark smiled at Bruce. “Both kinds of work, assuming my powers come back.” Then he shrugged. “And if they don’t, well… I can still help in some way, I’m sure.”

“So even if you have no powers, you won’t go back to a...normal life?” Bruce kept his voice level, but Clark could hear the emotion beneath the words as clearly as if Bruce had shouted them: _You won’t leave me?_

“ _You_ don’t have powers, right?” Bruce’s mouth twitched wryly and he nodded. “So it can be done. I can help in some way.” Clark waved a hand at the soft whisper of rain outside, the mist lifting from the lake into the steel-gray sky. “This has been...wonderful. But it’s not my life.” He looked at Bruce. “It’s not _your_ life.” He cleared his throat. “It’s not our life.”

“Our life,” Bruce said softly, and for a moment they simply sat together.

Then Bruce came to his feet, all business. “Okay, about the sunlight. I’ve been thinking about it and it seems Kryptonian cells absorb solar radiation and transform it into energy, so it stands to reason that if we expose you to sunlight, your powers may well come back. All we have to do is drive out of this weather system and get you into the sun and--”

“--Bruce.” Clark caught at Bruce’s hand without rising. “My powers first manifested as a child. For decades, I’ve been able to hear voices on the other side of the world. I’ve been impervious to heat, to cold, to pain. I’ve been able to see microbes.”

“Really?” For a moment Bruce’s face lit up with an almost childlike curiosity and Clark caught a glimpse of the young boy he had once been. “That sounds _amazing._ ”

Clark couldn’t help but laugh. “It is, when it isn’t incredibly distracting. I’ve always had to find ways to...take in less, to process less, to cut myself off from the stimuli that were constantly bombarding me, or I’d have gone mad. When I have my powers, being fully _here and now_ and not, say, hearing music in Sydney or seeing microwaves--it takes an active effort of will.”

The scientific zeal on Bruce’s face had faded into sympathy. “That sounds...difficult,” he said, frowning.

“Sometimes,” Clark admitted. “But Bruce, this last week, here with you--I’ve been fully here and now, all the time. It’s been...a gift.” He touched the smooth slate of the floor, feeling the cool of it under his hand. “A gift I only became fully aware of once I got my memories back. But now I know.” He smiled up at Bruce. “And it’s a gift I’d like to enjoy for a few hours more with you.”

Bruce sank down slowly to sit next to him on the rug once more, his stern face set in uncharacteristically hesitant lines. “Of course,” he said, and Clark saw the rest of the sentence-- _It’s the least I can do considering I basically murdered you_ \--flicker through his eyes, saw him swallow the words with an effort. It was a beginning, at least. “We can enjoy the fire, I can have Alfred bring us some food--I bet you haven’t ever been able to enjoy alcohol, I have some great brandy we could--”

“Bruce,” Clark said. “I was thinking of something more...intimate.”

“Oh,” said Bruce. He had gone very still. He sat for a moment in silence, as if thinking deeply, then burst out: “Can you not have sex when you have powers? How does that work?” He caught himself. “Uh, sorry. But I’ve wondered.”

“You’ve wondered.”

“I’ve wondered a _lot,_ ” Bruce admitted.

“I can have sex,” Clark said. “It’s just…” He groped for words to describe it. Here, sitting on the floor without powers, with the soft sound of the rain and the crackle of the fire all around, it was almost hard to imagine it. “There’s always part of me that has to be working to _not_ see or hear or feel too much. Like having intrusive thoughts that you can learn to banish, but it’s still a conscious thing you have to do. It became second nature, a habit. But it’s not the same as it would be...no. I want…” He reached out and covered Bruce’s hand with his own. “I want to see what it’s like to lose myself in it completely. With you.”

“Oh.” Bruce rubbed at his chin. “So what do you want to do?”

Clark’s heart seemed to lurch. “ _Everything,”_ he said fervently. “I can’t--you can’t ask me to choose. I trust you.”

Something complex and pained flickered behind Bruce’s eyes at Clark’s last words. He took a breath. “All right then,” he said. “If you really trust me, I have a favor to ask of you.”

* * *

Clark was lying on a blanket thrown down on the slate floor of the living room, for Bruce couldn’t bear to take him into the dark of the bedroom. No more darkness. Here, where windows let in the misty silver light, here was the right place.

There was a long, thin scratch along Clark’s midriff where some bramble had slipped through his clothes. There was a bruise on his hipbone, just above his jeans, gained from banging into something in the dark of the caves. Bruce touched his lips to both small wounds and heard Clark murmur something wordless, the sound blending with the rain. He pushed Clark’s sweater higher, exposing more and more skin, reveling in the sight of it, touching each rib almost reverently. _The Word became flesh and dwelt among us, full of grace and truth_ came a sudden echo from his childhood, like light through stained glass windows and the scent of incense. He banished it as sternly as he had banished his thoughts about Kryptonian biology. _No gods here, just two men._ But his fingers trembled for a moment before he could steady them again.

He could feel Clark’s breaths quickening at his touch, and as he approached a nipple Clark suddenly squirmed out of his sweater, emerging flushed and with his hair rumpled, smiling at Bruce almost triumphantly. Bruce flicked his fingers across the nipple and Clark’s smile faltered into surprise and delight, his eyes going half-closed. “That feels…” His voice trailed off.

After a long silence, Bruce dragged his finger across to the other nipple, feeling Clark tense in anticipation before he brushed it, summoning a shaky sigh. “How does it feel?”

“Like everything,” Clark said. “Like… _everything._ ”

“I don’t want my pleasure to be part of it,” Bruce had explained. “I want this to be about you. About me making you feel.” _Feel something other than pain and fear,_ he hadn’t said. _I want to know that I can bring you joy._ “I want my pleasure to be your pleasure.”

Clark had looked at him for a long time, head slightly to the side, his gaze seeming to look at and through Bruce, reading his soul. Then he had smiled.

“This time,” he had said like a promise.

So Bruce bent over him and felt Clark’s pulse flutter in his throat against Bruce’s lips. He took Clark out of his clothes and savored the sight of him smiling then relished the way that smile faltered as he put his hands on him at last, stroking and coaxing. 

“That’s--” Clark’s voice was breathless. He canted his hips upward into Bruce’s touch. “Oh.” He reached up and grabbed at Bruce’s collar like a drowning man clutching at a spar. “It’s--it’s--don’t stop.”

Bruce stopped and Clark glared at him. The glare broke off into a startled noise as Bruce shifted to kiss the bruise on his hip again, then moved to his thighs. Bruce felt his stubble scratching at the skin of Clark’s inner thighs; Clark’s erection pushed up against him harder at the sensation. Clark hissed, and his hands hovered over Bruce’s head, the fingers splayed. 

Bruce reached up and took Clark’s hand and put it on his head. Then he took Clark in his mouth, revelling in the sound he made, sharp and surprised and abandoned. Clark’s fingers tightened in his hair, and Bruce let them guide him, let Clark set the pace: slow at first, luxurious. The soft and constant sound of the rain turned to a gentle whisper as they moved together, and Bruce lost himself in Clark’s delight. By the time Clark cried out, his back arching, even that had faded and there was nothing but the sound of Clark’s hoarse breaths and his own heartbeat in his ears, hammering with joy undeserved.

They lay together for a time, listening to the first birds greeting the morning. Clark’s eyes were drowsy and replete. “Thank you,” he said.

“I’m not done yet,” Bruce said. He kissed Clark’s collarbone and rested his head on his chest, reading the clues of his body: heartbeat, capillary dilation, breath rate. When he was fairly certain Clark was ready for more, he said, “Now I want to watch your face,” and reached down to take Clark in his hand again.

Clark gasped and yearned up into Bruce’s touch, sensitive and shuddering. He was hard again almost immediately ( _so young,_ Bruce thought wryly), eager under Bruce’s hands.

“Oh, I’ve never felt-- that’s too good, it’s--” Clark fell silent, his eyes closed, all his focus turned inward. The mist on the lake was lifting, the light turning from misty silver to pale gold, and Bruce watched Clark’s face as Bruce’s touch carried him back into pleasure, and then into release. He watched his former enemy abandon himself beneath his hands, and in that trust and faith found a different kind of release at last.

* * *

Some time later, Clark--cleaned up but still gloriously nude, sprawled across the blanket on the floor with lazy grace--looked out at the lake. For the first time in a week, sunlight touched the water and sent gleams of light all around the lake house. Bruce watched as a square of morning slanted across the floor, drawing close to them.

This time he didn’t move to close the shutters.

He propped himself up on an elbow and watched as Clark reached out, his bruised hand coming to rest in the oblong of light. As the sun touched his fingers, the dark marks faded away, leaving the skin unmarred, touched with gold. 

They waited together as the light moved to caress Clark’s face, limning his eyelashes; the scar on his cheek vanished into radiance. Clark sighed and closed his eyes for a moment, then opened them to smile at Bruce as the light moved across him. There were tears on his lashes like diamonds.

The scratch on his abdomen, the bruise on his hipbone: inch by slow inch the sunlight washed them away. 

Bruce had thought when Clark’s abilities came back there would be a burst of energy, a surge of power. He hadn’t expected it to be so quiet, so gentle: Clark simply seemed to become more _himself,_ to inhabit his own skin more fully, more truly. There was a beauty to it beyond anything Bruce had imagined, and for a fearful moment he could see a chasm open up between them again, between the sunlit god and the creature of fear and darkness.

And then Clark laughed as if he could see Bruce’s fears in his eyes, and pulled him into the hopeful sunlight for a kiss warm and bright enough to lift any shadow.


End file.
